The strategies of active surveying and active skimming are previewing techniques that may enable high school students to discover independently the macrostructure of expository materials. Research has indicated that advanced knowledge of overall discourse structure improves reading comprehension by serving as a framework for organizing new, incoming information. The two reading strategies help supply such advanced knowledge, while developing and reinforcing skills necessary for proficient reading. When students use these strategies, they learn to approach texts with purposes and expectations, to ask questions using their background knowledge as a resource, to hypothesize answers to their questions, to confirm or refute their answers when reading, and to further interact with the text by generating additional questions as they read. High school teachers should incorporate the active surveying and active skimming strategies into their content area lessons so that their students will be able to cope effectively with the reading demands of college courses. (An outline of a group activity in surveying a chapter, and an exercise in active skimming are included.) (RL)